My guest today is Hasib Malik. He is the co-founder of Creditbook, which is a technology company that empowers merchants and MSMEs in Pakistan.
Creditbook was built on the back of a deep market research that identified the biggest pain points for MSMEs in the country.
Hasib and I had an insightful conversation about the potential of Pakistan, what MSMEs need the most and Creditbook's current offerings and its roadmap to address them. Please see below a few key discussion points.
- There is significant opportunity in Pakistan as access to financial services is still limited while use of technology is increasing across the country (e.g. 1 million smart phones added per month, 70k POS terminals vs. 35 million cards)
- Creditbook is a B2B business, however it actually scales like a B2C given the characteristics of MSMEs, which actually shows the degree to which it contributes to financial inclusion
- Hasib's north star metric at Creditbook: number of transactions per user
- His role as the CEO is also Chief Communication Officer to ensure everyone understands their "why"
- Three key characteristics of Creditbook's team: comfort with ambiguity, bias for action and curiosity
Please enjoy my conversation with Hasib Malik.